By Femi Aribisala

In Nigeria, nobody gets elected as president on the
platform that he is going to be an anti-corruption
crusader when he gets into office.
One thing is for sure: Muhammadu Buhari would
like to be the next president of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria. He has tried three times and
has failed every time. Finally realizing it is a lost
cause, he said he would not try again.
But now he is persuaded to try again. His
supporters are impressed that he won 12 million
votes against Goodluck Jonathan in 2011.
However, they need to be reminded that he lost to
Jonathan by over 10 million votes.
Since the third time did not turn out to be a charm
for Buhari, what are we to call his fourth attempt?
Listening to the declaration of his new-fangled
presidential bid in Eagles’ Square, Abuja a few
days ago, it is seems this fourth time is going to
be one big charade.
The sign was provided by none other than Buhari
himself. Since his one credential is that he is a
man of integrity who, as president, is expected to
wrestle corruption down to the ground, Buhari
decided to burnish his anti-corruption image by
revealing that he obtained his 27.5 million naira
APC nomination form with a bank loan. However,
what this declaration did was to tell Nigerians that
Buhari is a pretentious anti-corruption crusader.
His Mr. Clean posture is nothing but a public
relations gimmick.

Question marks

In fairness, some of us have known this all along.
Under Buhari’s watch as Petroleum Minister in the
late 1970s, $2.8 billion (worth billions of naira
today) was missing from the NNPC account. The
matter was subject to Senate investigation under
the chairmanship of Olusola Saraki in 1983. But
before the report could be dealt with, Buhari
conveniently overthrew the Shagari government in
a military coup d’état.
Vera Ifudu, an NTA newscaster, revealed that
Saraki told her in an interview that the missing
money was traced to Buhari’s account at Midland
Bank in London. For this disclosure, Vera was
summarily sacked by the NTA. However, she
appealed against her dismissal in court and won.
She even received a handsome financial
compensation for wrongful dismissal from the NTA.
Instead of clearing his name as a man of integrity,
Buhari refused to appear before the Oputa Panel set
up to look into the matter (among under things) by
the Obasanjo administration.
Buhari claims to be an anti-corruption crusader,
nevertheless, he agreed to serve under Sani
Abacha, one of the most corrupt Heads-of-State
ever in the history of Nigeria. While there has
been no proven allegation that Buhari corruptly
enriched himself as Chairman of the Petroleum
Trust Fund under Abacha, it is abundantly clear
that this fabled anti-corruption crusader failed to
curb the rampant corruption that prevailed in the
organization. Group Captain Usman Jibrin, a
board member of PTF, resigned from the
organization in protest over Buhari’s irregular
appointments of consultants.
In 2000, the Obasanjo administration set up an
Interim Management Committee to look into the
affairs of the PTF, under the chairmanship of
Haroun Adamu. The Committee discovered that
billions of naira was stolen under Buhari’s
chairmanship.
Political platform
Now the same Buhari who would not or could not
curb corruption in the PTF wants us to believe he
will fight corruption as president of Nigeria.
However, he has chosen the APC as the political
platform on which to undertake this. But the APC
is an unscrupulous political party that is choc-full
of corrupt politicians. It is the party of Murtala
Nyako who was impeached as governor of
Adamawa State for converting state money to
personal use. It is the party where Buhari himself
and others went cap-in-hand to Otta to beg
Obasanjo to be their “navigator.”
Surely Buhari knows that he cannot fight
corruption by being the presidential candidate of
the APC. Whatever anti-corruption crusading
Buhari had in him in the past must have ended
when he decided to join the APC. Should he
become president, does he intend to probe his
corrupt party-members? Has he made them
understand he would be coming after them once
elected? If he has, does he really expect them to
help him get elected so he can retrieve their stolen
loot and send them off to jail?
A 72 year-old man with Buhari’s experience, who
was overthrown in a preemptive coup by members
of his own government, knows that in Nigeria,
nobody gets elected as president on the platform
that he is going to be an anti-corruption crusader
when he gets into office. That is a sure signal for
all the politicians in all the parties to gang up
against him and make sure he never makes it.
If you really want to be anti-corruption, you have
to keep your mouth shut about your plans until
you get elected and then catch your corrupt
colleagues by surprise. You must also have
resolved not to seek re-election for a second-
term. It is not only the populace, but the
politicians in particular, who insist on “stomach
infrastructure.” But if you are talking anti-
corruption while still seeking the nomination of
your party, it must be because it is well known to
your corrupt colleagues that your anti-corruption
stance is merely for public consumption.

Cleaning up APC

It is not surprising, therefore, that despite all the
noise about anti-corruption coming from Buhari
and his cohorts; he has failed to fight against
corruption in the APC. We did not hear him raise
a voice against the incongruity of a so-called
progressive party demanding a cynical nomination
fee of 27.5 million naira for its presidential
primaries. One would have expected a truly anti-
corruption crusader to make the point that the
nomination fee is unacceptable. Instead, Buhari
readily acquiesced to the requirement in order to
safeguard his all-important presidential ambitions.
Since Buhari cannot, or does not, fight against this
corrupting nomination fee in the APC, and insist on
its reduction to something far more reasonable,
how can he expect us to believe that as president
in a political system with the separation of powers;
against a legislature likely to be controlled by the
PDP; he would be able to fight corruption?
Somebody is fooling somebody here. Or else,
somebody is living in a cloud cuckoo land.
Charity, they say, begins at home. If Buhari is
truly anti-corruption, he should begin his crusade
in the APC. Is it progressive for a political party in
Nigeria to ask its candidates to come up with 27.5
million just for the nomination papers for an
election where only one person will emerge as the
winner? Is it not corrupt politicians that are likely
to have this type of easy-come easy-go money?
Is this not an open invitation for the winner, if he
actually manages to secure election to the
presidency, to recoup this extortionate fee from
public funds?

Anti-corruption bank loan

What did anti-corruption Buhari do about this
outrageous APC requirement? This is where the
whole matter becomes ridiculously implausible.
According to Buhari, rather than fight against the
measure, he took out a ban loan to pay for it.
Buhari told us about his “loan” out of
embarrassment; in a pathetic bid to validate his
anti-corruption credentials. But this so-called
loan indicates that Buhari does not understand
what it means to be anti-corruption. For Buhari,
anti-corruption is a posture; it is a swagger; it is a
badge; but it has no bite and, in the usual Nigerian
fashion, it will be prosecuted with hypocrisy.
Buhari wants us to believe that he cannot afford
27.5 million naira. Nevertheless, he rides around
in a bullet-proof Jeep and maintains a convoy of
Land Cruisers. He cannot afford 27.5 million
naira. Nevertheless, he declared his candidacy
lavishly in Eagle Square, Abuja. Did he also take
out a bank loan for that? Four months to a make-
or-break election, Buhari would have us believe he
has no money. How does he propose to finance
his presidential campaign? Is he going to take 1
billion naira loan from the World Bank for this?

Dubious loan

Why would a bank lend Buhari that amount for a
presidential pie-in-the-sky that failed to
materialize three times in the past? Is that not
likely to be a bad loan? How long did it take for
the loan to be processed? What did he put down
as anti-corruption collateral? How does he
propose to pay the money back? Mr. Integrity
needs to spell all this out for the sake of his fast-
disintegrating anti-corruption credentials.
I did not know loans are so easy to secure in
Nigerian banks today. Perhaps Buhari could
introduce me to his bank manager. I would also
not mind taking this kind of soft loan. I am sure I
can always come up with some unproductive
excuse or the other for it. Is such a loan even
legal today under Nigeria’s stricter banking laws?
How many honest Nigerians can afford to give a
non-refundable 27.5 million naira to a political
party, on the off-chance that they will be able to
secure the party’s presidential ticket? If they win
the nomination and even get elected president,
how would they pay back the money?
Not presidential material
It is clear that Buhari is not only lacking the money
to pay for APC nomination papers, he does not
have the funds to pay for advisers, to counsel him
about what to tell the public and how to prosecute
an effective presidential campaign. His advisers
might have educated him that there is something
called “fund-raising.” Surely, the most popular
politician in the North-West can find some of his
ardent supporters to give him 27 million naira.
Certainly, a former governor of the Central Bank
can easily cough up the money.
Buhari wants to fight an election that will take
place in four months time. From what he tells us,
he does not have 27 million to prosecute that
election now. If this is true, he is not the right
man to be president of Nigeria. For a man who is
running for election for the fourth time, that is the
height of cluelessness. It shows Buhari is lousy at
marshalling resources. Otherwise, he is fooling
nobody but himself.
www.vanguardngr.com/2014/10/muhammadu-buhari-running-president-anti-corruption-bank-loan/

Too long, post like this don't make front page and end only in first or second page, this is one thread the APC e militia sect will never comment, knowing they have much e suicide bombers than the hired TANroids on nairaland, watch them avoid this thread like plague.

Sai Buhari